Wooster Benefit

In my fourth week I volunteered to help out at the Wooster Group’s Spring Benefit at 632 on Hudson (check out their photos). Buck Henry was the star guest, along with Steve Buscemi, Frances McDormand, Lorne Michaels, Mike Nichols and Maura Tierney. If you wanted to attend the night of cocktails, entertainment and dinner, this party would cost $1,500 for a ticket! During cocktails AndrewAndrew deejayed and the Wooster performers did a little skit. See the following tweet photos from the Wooster Group: Maura Tierney and Steve Buscemi.

My task at the benefit was to check in the guest coats as they arrived. The coat room was downstairs near the kitchen which meant I was running up and down all night. The amount of times I almost fell down the stairs and sprained my ankle was totally worth it as I got to meet Steve Buscemi and Scott Shepherd while checking in their coats.

After the guests had cocktails those who were staying for dinner went to the dinning room. My next task was to help people to their seats and watch the waiters do some fancy serving. 

The male waiters at the venue were amazingly beautiful and almost identical. They were all the same height and had the same check bone structure. I found out later that the venue actually holds auditions and most of the waiters are part time models. As I’m standing there batting my eyelids (trying not to faint) these waiters line up beside me and then swoop into the room placing the next meal on the table. It was quite funny watching these boys serve dinner, performing a choreography, with each waiter having one hand behind their back and placing the plate down on the table at the exact same time.

When the dinner finished things got really exciting. Kate Valk and Ari Flaikos (Wooster performers) said thank you to those who organised the night. This included Kate thanking the interns and pointing towards me and another intern at the back of the room. When people came to collected their coats they would ask me if I enjoyed being an intern for the Wooster Group. I’d humbly say yes and then started a conversation about their evening.

I was talking to one lady and she said, “Oh are you from Australia? Buck come and meet this lovely Australian girl!” Buck Henry walks up to me and shakes my hand! He was so lovely and went on to tell me this story of how he had met an Australian years ago who had the strongest accent he had ever heard. I then attempted my best bogan accent but Buck said my accent isn’t very strong!

                                                          Steve and Buck

As people were starting to say good bye a bunch of Wooster Group workers and interns were chatting. Ari Flaikos came over and started to say goodbye. He went around the group giving everyone a kiss on the cheek. Then he gets to me.... I've only introduced myself to Ari once, and that was about two weeks ago.... Ari had this look on his face like he was thinking I know you, but I don’t really know you, and I should give you a kiss on the cheek because I have for everyone else and I don’t want to seem rude. His hesitation only lasted for less than a second. We kind of both awkwardly leaned in. After we said goodbye, Ari still had the same look on his face. Wait how do I know you?

I might not have eaten the fancy food and sipped on cocktails all night but it was totally worth volunteering my time to go to a $1,500 event.

Arrivederci.

Unusual Mail

On my third day as an Intern (which is actually my third week since starting) the Development Manager received a hand written letter. Bewildered by such an item (apparently people still physically write letters) she opened the letter and began to read it out loud. From memory it went something like this:

Dear Wooster Group,

I am an innocent man who has been sentenced to death. I wish to work with your company in producing a theatre piece about my story.

The remainder of the letter outlined other theatre works that the prisoner had produced and how he wanted to sell his story in the hopes that the company would devise a theatre piece based on his life.

After reading the letter the Development Manager was a bit shocked and unsure what to do, especially with three young interns gawking at her, she quickly realised that it probably wasn't the best idea to have read the letter out loud and went into her office to hide.

Nothing happened after that, everyone went back to staring at their computer screens and I was sent out to go to the post office. I guess the Wooster Group have decided not to pursue this story as I haven’t heard anything else about it. What a random letter though!